The Master

The house was filled with the sounds of happy giggling as the front door slammed shut. The married couple stumbled into their home after their date night; tipsy but not drunk, well fed but not overfull, happy and very much in love. Matthew Hawkins was tall and thin, with a sharp, angular face and neatly cropped black hair. The top few buttons of his shirt were undone and his suit jacket slightly rumpled, but other things were taking his attention rather than fixing his outfit as he dipped his head to kiss his wife.

Sarah Hawkins was the opposite of her husband in many ways. She was short, large-breasted, and carrying some extra weight that gave her soft hourglass curves. Her hair was a light, mousey brown and hung down between her shoulder blades as she turned her pale face upwards, slightly crooked teeth showing through her unguarded smile in the moment before their lips met in a loving kiss. Their arms wrapped around each other; hers reaching up and further ruffling his jacket, while his slid lower so that his hands sat on the small ribbon of exposed skin in between her jeans and her knitted cardigan.

“Love you,” Sarah murmured happily, her breath tickling across Matt’s face.

“I love you too, beautiful,” he replied in a husky whisper, then kissed her cheek, then her jaw, then her neck.

Sarah’s eyes shot open as Matt’s teeth nipped playfully at the sensitive skin of her throat, a quiet gasp escaping as for a single moment she lost herself in the pleasure of being loved and desired. Then the moment passed, and her expression turned to one of discomfort.

“Matt, stop,” she mumbled, placing a hand on his shoulder to gently push him away, “Not tonight.”

Matt resisted her for a few seconds, buying himself enough time to **** a smile back onto his face, then pulled back.

“Some other time then,” he said softly and without judgement.

Even if the smile would have fooled most people, Sarah had seen it often enough to recognise it. Her face crumpled inward in guilt, and she looked away.

“Sorry. I just don’t want to spoil a lovely evening,” she said, eyes downcast.

Matt’s false smile froze. “...spoil?”

“Well, not ‘spoil’,” Sarah backtracked, taking a step away from her husband as she winced, “I just mean... um. Tonight has been so nice, and we’ve had a good time, and...”

“I thought you enjoyed it when we have sex,” Matt said, his expression still painfully static, “If there’s anything different you want me to do, then just-”

“No! It’s not that. I did enjoy it. I mean, I do enjoy it. It’s just... not tonight. Please.”

“Alright,” he agreed with quiet resignation, ignoring the aches in his chest and his underwear as he turned away to step into the kitchen, “Do you want anything to drink, or should we go straight to bed?”

“Matt...” Sarah called after her husband in a pained whisper, but when she looked through the doorway she had just watched him enter, he was nowhere to be seen.

Matt stepped through the kitchen doorway and into a throne room, which caused some amount of confusion. His kitchen doorway didn’t usually connect to a medieval castle, as far as he was aware. The room was long, made of grey stone and carpeted in red and gold, with a high vaulted ceiling and massive stained glass windows along both sides depicting various mythological creatures. A final window on the wall behind the throne, larger than the rest, showed a dragon coiled around a pile of treasure. Every window was backlit by the same warm evening sunshine, even though they were facing in three separate directions.

At the far side of the room a golden throne stood on a raised dais, looking down on eight wooden chairs arranged in a semicircle around it. Behind Matt was a set of huge wooden doors that were definitely not the one he’d walked through. For lack of anything better to do, and to try and distract himself from the lurking panic attack, he tried one of the door handles. The wrought iron was warm beneath his fingers, but didn’t budge an inch no matter how hard he tried to turn it.

“There’s power in stories,” came a bright and clear voice from the top of the room, “Especially the ones we tell ourselves.”

Matt very slowly released the handle and turned around. He’d thought he was the only person in the enormous room, but there was now a woman standing at the foot of the dais. Small but somehow larger than life in her red leather jacket, her ginger hair was wildly messy and her yellow eyes stared into space as though performing for an invisible camera.

“Hello?” Matt called out nervously, taking a step toward the woman.

“Stories help us make sense of the world. Stories are what make life bearable. Stories let us explore and experience all the things we crave,” the woman continued as though she hadn’t heard him, “Love and romance! Danger and excitement! Character growth and transformation! And, dear Audience, here at Harem Hotel we are all about growth and transformation.”

The redhead gave a theatrical wink to the empty air and flourished an orange feather between her finger and thumb. Matt stumbled slightly as he tried to approach her, his body almost refusing to cooperate in protest of the absurd scenario.

“Hello?” he tried again, getting no more reaction than the first time, “What’s going on? Who are you? Where am I?”

“Personally, though I might be biased here, my favourite stories are the ones where the protagonist is **** to go through a change they didn’t know they needed. Stories where they get another go at achieving what they really want, whether they realise it or not. Our Master and Contestants for this season are all happy enough in their lives, or that’s the story they tell themselves at least, but wouldn’t they all be so much happier in some kind of hedonistic polyamorous fuckfest?”

A pause for an imaginary answer, or perhaps inaudible canned laughter. Matt managed to get a few steps closer to the throne and the woman, but found himself bizarrely invested in finding out what strange direction her monologue would take next. He said nothing, and didn’t look away.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and distinguished Audience members of any, many, or indeterminate gender, my name is Scarlet and I will be your Host for this very special season of Harem Hotel: Storytelling Edition!” The woman spread her arms wide as she cried out the final words, then flashed a lopsided grin as she paused for some extremely well-hidden pyrotechnics to spray flames and sparks into the air behind her. Before the final flickers had died away, she finally looked at Matt and extended a hand in his direction. “Now let’s meet our Master!”

Matt nearly jumped out of his skin as another burst of flame shot out of the floor either side of him, so distracted he didn’t realise at first that Scarlet had grabbed his arm and was tugging him forward to stand at the foot of the raised platform.

“Who...? What...?” he said, struggling to form a complete sentence.

“Welcome to the Hotel, Master,” Scarlet said with a theatrical bow, the feather sweeping out wide to one side, “We’ll meet your harem in a moment, but for now it’s time to introduce yourself to the Audience!”

“Harem?” Matt said with a dry mouth, “What Audience?”

“We’ll get to that later,” she flapped her hand dismissively, “Just answer the questions.”

“What quest-” he began, only to be interrupted by the pointed lower tip of the orange feather poking him in the nose and then the sudden shock of an overriding compulsion taking root in his brain. “Hello, my name is Matthew Hawkins. I’m thirty years old and I work as an investment banker, though I always wanted to be an author. I’m straight, and the last time I had sex was six months ago when my wife was in a good mood and I spent most of an afternoon making her cum as many times as possible in hopes she’d want to do it again sometime. I know the Master because he’s the one who looks back at me in the mirror.”

“Well hellooo Matty!” Scarlet grinned and nudged him with an elbow, “Your wife sounds like a lucky girl, but gosh - six months? And it sounds like it wasn't a frequent occurrence before then either, huh? Let’s see if we can’t get you a more regular sex life than that before the end of the season.”

“What season?” Matt demanded, starting to get angry now, “How did you just make me say all that?”

“So many questions!” she giggled playfully, “Take your seat and I’ll explain it all.”

The Host gestured with her quill, and Matt followed the line of the gesture up to the throne. He blinked in surprise, looking back and forth between the golden chair and the redheaded presenter. “...seriously? That’s my seat?”

“But of course! You are the Master, after all.”

Rather than asking yet another question that probably wouldn’t be answered anyway, Matt let out a deep sigh and climbed the steps to the top of the dais, and sat on the throne. It was surprisingly warm for something that looked like it was made out of metal, but not very comfortable. The seat was flat and hard, and the edge dug sharply into the back of his thighs. He folded his arms in front of him and stared at Scarlet as she climbed the stairs after him with an exaggerated swagger.

Getting a longer and closer look at Scarlet’s face as she approached, Matt started to realise just how weird her yellow eyes actually were - even beyond the colour. She didn’t just have yellow irises, the orbs were entirely the same shade without any whites; just the black dot of her oversized pupils breaking it up. They were more like a bird’s eyes than a human’s. She smiled at him with only one side of her mouth, and draped herself over one of the unused arms of the throne, half-sitting facing out at the room, performing for the invisible camera again.

“Welcome, Matthew Hawkins, to Harem Hotel: the game show where a set of lovely ladies will compete for your favour and a prominent position in your brand new harem!” she splayed her arms and legs wide, nearly tumbling into Matt’s lap before righting herself, “With the help or hindrance of magical transformations and compulsions, like the very mild ones I used to keep you calm and make you introduce yourself, they’ll try to win points and the approval of our Audience by performing acts of love and affection with the Master of the harem.” She leaned in and continued in a stage whisper, “That’s you, Matty.”

“...I’m married,” Matt responded in a strangled voice, lifting his left hand to show the plain band of gold on his ring finger, “I don’t need a harem and I’m not performing any ‘acts of love and affection’ with anyone but my wife. You’ve got the wrong guy.”

“Oh, no. You’re definitely the right guy, Matty,” Scarlet said, her grin spreading to the other side of her mouth and turning almost predatory, “We know all about your past, and what your sex life was like before your five-year dry spell. We know all about those fantasies you’ve never felt comfortable saying out loud. We know all about your browser history.”

Matt blushed hard and opened his mouth to defend himself against the entirely valid accusations, but Scarlet spun herself off the arm of the throne and skipped back down the steps before he could say anything.

“As for being married,” the Host said slyly, flourishing her feather again, “Shall we meet the first Contestant?”